


An Ending

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Darkest Timeline, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-09 21:37:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10422285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: If this was one of those stories, Locus thinks as he watches the newsreel on loop, things would have gone differently.The Reds and the Blues would have lived, would have gone home and maybe had a life as close to normal as they were capable of.This is not one of those stories.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Septdeneuf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septdeneuf/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Dish best served late](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7447960) by [Septdeneuf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septdeneuf/pseuds/Septdeneuf). 



> My remix for "Dish Best Served Late!" I had a ball writing it and I Septdeneuf likes it! I loved your work and it was an honor to write for you!

Locus doesn’t learn they’re dead until he’s on another planet.

In retrospect, he’s not sure how he avoided the news for so long. Everything after Felix’s fall to his death is a blur, a mess of the world he thought he lived in and the world that he almost destroyed. He barely remembers finding one of their hidden shuttles to get off planet (he has to find Hargrove somehow), barely remembers how he pilots it to somewhere that won’t know his name. He does not notice the ship hovering over the planet in his haze, nor does he notice how he knows its hull, knows that it belongs to the very person he is hunting down.

No, what he remembers is looking down at his sword in that tiny shuttle, watching the light blade glimmer in front of him. Another weapon for him to wield. Something that could destroy an entire world on a whim.

And he used it to broadcast the truth he’d long denied far and wide. Chorus is in desperate need of help, Hargrove cares far more about his pocketbooks than people, and he is the monster that people put in history books and only speak about in a whisper. 

When he makes it to the planet it takes him a day to leave the shuttle and walk into town. The cloaking device is useful for being unseen, and he makes sure to grab a few pairs of clothes at an outpost, his ghostly form leaving the required credits on the counter. He ends up at the bar to only acquire information and nothing more. The fact he notices the television at all is pure chance.

There on the screen, is a funeral. A military one: he remembers Mason’s far too well for his own liking. The ticker tape on the screen is easy enough to read, but Locus doesn’t bother to read it as he takes in the coffins shown. Two blue. Five red. One purple.

Locus does not learn that Hargrove has arrived as he steps into a shuttle hidden among the forest. Locus does not learn the Reds and Blues are going to fight him as he flies past Hargrove’s ship, not realizing that it is, in fact, Hargroves. Locus does not learn they are making their final stand as he looks at a sword and wonders what this means, wonders what he’s supposed to do from here now that he looks in the mirror and sees a monster staring back at him. 

No, Locus, learns the Reds and Blues died in a bloody fight on the staff of Charon in a shitty bar in a forgotten planet.

Locus learns far too late.  
  


* * *

 

A long time ago, when Locus went by Sam and saw a person in the mirror instead of a soldier, he read books.

It was a good habit to pick up in the USNC, something to keep him busy between missions and orders. Books were preferable to socializing with the other recruits, and Sam never had a taste for gambling with only pocket change. Felix made fun of him in those days, called him a bookworm as he poured through everything from Earth classics to modern adventure novels. 

Locus had told him to fuck off. Even before everything, Felix was still the most annoying person he’d ever met.

He had a pattern to his reading choices. His favorites, the books he read more than once, were always epics about good versus evil, two opposing sides at odds over the fate of the world. In these books, heroes were heroes, villains were villains. Things followed a formula that felt just, and while Locus himself was not an idealist by any means, he liked the structure to it. These novels were predictable. Things could be certain. And that was something he longed for in a war where everything blended in shades of the unknown. 

Then the alien had happened. Something small and scared and he could have saved it if he just--

Locus stopped reading after that. Fictional certainty stopped being a comfort and started being a mockery. He hung out with Felix more. Embraced the man’s company, his motormouth and grey look at the world. 

If this was one of those stories, Locus thinks as he watches the newsreel on loop, things would have gone differently. He would have died at that tower, died on Charon, died instead of escaping to live with blood on his hands and ghosts over his shoulder. Hargrove would be in jail, beaten on his own ship against all odds, and the audience would relish the look on his face as the entire galaxy saw him for what he was. The Reds and the Blues would have lived, would have gone home and maybe had a life as close to normal as they were capable of. 

This is not one of his stories. Hargrove escaped his ship after slaughtering the Reds and Blues, ran off somewhere with his blood money as comfort. The Reds and the Blues are dead, closed coffin funerals for them all, their happy ending nothing but a legacy. And Locus, Locus the monster, Locus the killer, Locus the fool, is free to do as he pleases.

Locus picks up a novel on his flight to the next planet, and reads the first few pages. Return of the King: an old one, but a favorite. Dense enough for his liking. He gets only ten pages in before he puts it down to continue watching the news. 

The dead faces of Agent Washington and Carolina haunt him when he closes his eyes, along with everyone else. 

* * *

He starts to get rid of his blood money two weeks after hunting Hargrove.

He doesn’t get rid of all of it; he needs some funds if he wants any chance of watching the light leave Hargrove’s eyes personally. But the excess, the joint account he and Felix shared, all of that goes to other places. Most of it he gives to Chorus under a fake name, something for rebuilding efforts and aid to the region. It’s not much considering what he’s done. But it’s something. 

Another fraction of it he dedicates to smaller causes. He read the Simulation Troopers’ files: he knows what they have left behind. Grif’s sister receives a check to pay for housing for the next few years. Caboose’s sisters each find a check for a fraction of their college debt or other outstanding bills they need paid. When Junior turns 18, he will find himself with a college fund larger than expected from Tucker’s salary. Grey is given some funds for the clinic she’s trying to start. 

He gives Washington and Carolina some as well, a smaller amount than most. Both of his checks are donated to Chorus at once. A message is sent back to him and while finding his com number should be impossible he’s not surprised.

_ We don’t want it. We’re coming for you. _

Locus throws out his com and gets a new one. It’s the reaction he wanted; when he kills Hargrove and his cronies, there’s still one more monster to slay.

Might as well give the job to someone who will find satisfaction in completing it. 

* * *

 

He makes progress. Hargrove isn’t as hard to find as he thinks and within two months Locus is closer by miles than the USNC.

He keeps his eye on the planet he almost ruined. They’re rebuilding, as much as they can. Carolina leaves the planet with a pilot she used to know, and Locus is surprised to find her bringing Grey with. Washington leaves as well, but his destination is a boarding school instead of Locus’ trail. Locus assumes he’ll be after him with Carolina once he knows Tucker’s son is settled. He doubts a man with a history of vengeance will be able to resist getting justice for his lost squad. 

He finds a Hargrove on a small planet, armed to the teeth, another month later. Killing him is easy. He falls back into the soldier persona, wears his armor like a shell, and when Hargrove dies with blood in his mouth, there is no satisfaction in it.

Locus kills him with a bullet to the throat. The sword he carries remains unused. It seems wrong to use the symbol of the one thing he did right to slaughter, even if those he is killing deserve it. 

After that, he settles in that old broken base. Makes a camp of it. Waits for the Freelancers to find him. 

* * *

  
The Freelancers don’t find him. At least, not first. A man in orange armor does instead.

Locus feels foolish he didn’t check the body afterwards. A sword wasn’t enough evidence to declare a man dead.  He should have known it would take more than a long fall to kill the devil. 

“Hey partner,” Felix says and he looks delighted. Locus is suddenly terribly aware of the money Felix put into a survival suit, the money Locus mocked him for. “Surprised to see me?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t bother lying. He gets up, leaving his sword behind him. “I assume you’re here to kill me?”

Felix tilts his head in that way that looks bloodthirsty. Like a hyena, Locus thinks. “Kill you? That would be too--”

Locus tunes him out. He’s never cared for Felix’s speeches, overwrought as they are. Locus has always prefered to be more direct, to get to the point of it all instead of “playing with his food.”

Here’s why he knows what will happen. They will fight here. One of them won’t survive. The winner will leave the loser's corpse here, and take the sword off to whatever they plan next. For Locus, that will be to continue waiting for his execution squad. For Felix, that can be anything from sleeping restfully on his pile of blood money, to going back to Chorus to raze it to the ground.

“Shame I couldn’t kill the Reds and Blues myself. Hargrove had to take all the fun out of it. Woulda enjoyed gutting them. You won’t nearly be as much fun.”

If the latter happens, there will be no Reds or Blues to save the planet now. No ragtag squadron of idiots who against all odds win again and again. No, Chorus would be on its own. No heroes to save them this time.

Locus has done only one truly unselfish good thing in his life. He owes it to the Red and Blues to do another. 

When he charges at Felix, the sword that saved a world remains behind, untouched. 

A week later, walking around the bodies of two dead mercenaries, Agent Carolina picks it up, watches the light glow on her visor, and thinks of an A.I who sat on her shoulder and called her sister.

Next to her, Agent Washington looks at his own sword, the sword of a man who he called family, and wonders what kind of ending this is, one blood soaked and empty.

Neither says anything in the silence.


End file.
